Eyes Open

This week I’ve been following the trial of Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old man who is accused of drugging his wife over a period of nine years so that he could invite dozens of men into their home to abuse her. The trial comes in among a terrifying increase in instances of violence against women, the horrific murder of Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei, the rape and murder last month of the Indian medical trainee (who cannot be named because of reporting laws in India), the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, three young girls attending a Taylor Swift dance workshop in Stockport.

I write books about sexual and gender violence, it’s not a topic I’m in the habit of shying away from. But lately, I’ve found my stomach turning every time I read something in the news. I don’t want to feel afraid, I don’t want to make other women feel afraid. I want to live a bold and full life and I want other women to feel that they can do the same. I’ve spent two months travelling alone in North America, in cities that were unfamiliar to me. Walking alone at night, I take precautions. I don’t make eye contact and I have one headphone in so that I can hear noises, I stay to busier streets. I hate the calculus I’m constantly having to make, assessing what I’m wearing based on how late I’ll be walking, taking taxis I don’t want to take because of the time, but the miserable fact is that these are necessary precautions. Ignoring violence doesn’t make it less likely to happen, though I’ve certainly been through plenty of phases in my life when I’ve lived by this logic.

In the same way, ignoring these news stories — much as I want to, much as it makes me nauseous every time I encounter them — doesn’t do anything to address the scourge that is misogynistic violence.

One of the best articles I’ve read about the Pelicot case was published last week in La Libération by novelist and musician Lola Lafon: “‘Monstre’ a pour synonyme ‘phénomenal’ et ‘faramineux’. Des monstres, ces 51 accusés? Mais ils sont, au contraire, d’une humanité médiocre, ceux devant lesquels Gisèle a choisi de se tenir, pour pouvoir les regarder droit dans les yeux.” Monsters: “phenomenal” or “far-reaching”. Are they monsters, these 51 accused? They are, on the contrary, of a mediocre humanity, in front of whom Gisèle has chosen to stand, to look them straight in the eyes.

This is precisely it. The banality, the mediocrity of misogynistic violence, which, in the popular imagination, is mythic. We have to mythologise violence so that it remains the preserve of monstrous men. The truth that Lafon posits is a truth by which I am entirely convinced, but it is one we cannot swallow because it forces us to look at our own communities — our friends, brothers, fathers. Our colleagues, people we love and admire, who actively contribute to society, who undeniably have plenty to offer, and who also happen to treat the women in their private lives with daily disrespect that exists on a continuum with the violent hatred that causes a man to pour petrol on a woman he once loved and set her on fire. This bears repeating. The boyfriend who gets a kick out of humiliating his partner, or degrading her, or manipulating her, is acting out of the same set of socialisations as the man who commits brazen violence against women. He is no better, he is simply less extreme.

We don’t want to accept the truth of this mediocrity, the ubiquity of this violence because to do so would require too much work, too much accountability, too many uncomfortable confrontations and conversations. There would have to be consequences, and there would have to be solidarity. But the problem, for as long as we fail to hold those men that we love accountable for their violence, is not only that they are able to act with impunity but that their victims become isolated. They understand that they are worth less than their abuser, and they absorb the knowledge of this low value into their sense of self, and so the cycle repeats.

I have so much more to say, but I’m keeping this newsletter short and I’m saving the rest for the book I’m currently working on. I’ll leave you with a book recommendation, and two quotes from one of my absolute favourite writers on this topic. The following are Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, which, if you have not read, I highly recommend. Its long awaited follow-up, Truth and Repair, is one of the best things I’ve read about justice and sexual violence. Side by side, these two quotes are among the most powerful things I have read about misogynistic violence specifically and systemic violence more generally, and what we can do about it.

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”

“Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.”